Defining Suitability in Mixed Pastoral-Agricultural Societies: A Case Study from Bactria in Northern Afghanistan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper explores the concept of suitability as a guiding parameter for applications of the Ideal Free/Despotic Distribution (IFD/IDD) in cases of mixed pastoral and agricultural economies. We briefly review recent archaeological survey data and research from Central Asia to contextualize how pastoral societies intersect and complement agricultural societies and discuss how suitability can be generally defined for a region and time period given the different requirements and environmental constraints of these different subsistence strategies. While pastoralism is inherently a more mobile and less archaeological visible lifestyle, recent research has demonstrated the interdependencies between pastoralist and agricultural societies, such that suitability parameters of agricultural settlements may be influenced by parameters necessary for pastoral strategies. Drawing on legacy diachronic survey data from ancient Bactria, located in Central Asia, we consider the efficacy of a singular definition of suitability for explaining shifts in settlement pattern occurring across various periods of sociopolitical control and organization. We conclude that agriculturally-relevant parameters alone fail to sufficiently model changes in settlement pattern, as predicted by the IFD/IDD, and proxies of suitability must take into consideration parameters relevant to pastoralism as well.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23340